© Columbia University Press
The Temptations of Tyranny in Central Asia
August, 2008
Cloth, 224 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-70025-2
$31.00
After the recent toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the important but overlooked ex-Soviet states of Central Asia-Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan-briefly became key players in the war on terror. Military and economic aid from America and other Western countries poured into the region on the assumption that stability and greater democratization would be the result. Only a few years later, however, the West's strategy to exert geopolitical influence in the region is in chaos and autocracy seems to be as entrenched as ever.
David Lewis's provocative book investigates why the U.S. alliance with Uzbekistan failed to produce reform and instead ended with the massacre of hundreds of civilians in Andijan. It provides the first detailed account of the 2005 revolution in Kyrgyzstan, explores political transition in Turkmenistan following the death of its eccentric former leader, Saparmurat Niyazov, and examines the Islamic militant groups that are believed to be threatening stability in the Ferghana Basin.